


Resolutions

by narsus



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Asexual Relationship, BDSM, Crossdressing, Genderplay, M/M, Service Submission, Sex Work, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 06:17:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his third divorce, Douglas decides that love is overrated.  He can get what he needs for a reasonable price after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resolutions

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Cabin Pressure belongs to John Finnemore and BBC Radio 4.

Far too many people are willing to drop the word ‘love’ into a relationship, where it lands like some fatal bomb, as far as Douglas is concerned. One too many “I love you’s” in his youth has soured him to the very idea. Love, as a word, rings hollow. It ought to be a verb not an adjective, not that he’ll admit that too openly. Being thought of as an old romantic isn’t quite the same as being seen as someone who genuinely loves. Romanticism is the stuff of theatrics and Douglas is nothing if not a great showman. He’s capable of remarkable acts of theatre after all. The odd, unexpected, gift here, a bunch of flowers there. A few lines, modernised and adapted to the situation of course, but nevertheless sounding like they could have been lifted from some Shakespearean narrative about the stupidity of teenagers. A tale, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Douglas knows, better than most, that a little melodrama goes a long way. Love then, is, in his expert opinion, highly overrated and far too commonplace.

Douglas won’t say that he’s never loved at all. He has and it’s always been disastrous. Love, or at least the notion of it, has broken him so many times that he’s certain that, these days, he’s missing far too many pieces. He will not, cannot, love again. Mostly because he doesn’t want to, not anymore, not with the stupidity with which he once embraced it. After his third divorce, the idea of falling in love again, strikes him as particularly suicidal. Which is why, now, he is utterly pragmatic about it. Douglas Richardson is a man who refuses to love again. It’s an absolute rule by which he now lives his life, and, so far, that rule has been serving him admirably. He no longer has to worry about his own vulnerability, about having yet another ex-wife to hound him or even a girlfriend to pester him for theatrics. He lives an entirely pragmatic life now.

Having ruled out love, of course, he needs to find other terms to describe his current situation. He isn’t in love of course, nor does he love anyone, because love and adoration are most certainly not the same thing. His mistress, in a gloriously perfect use of the term, isn’t loved by him: she is worshiped and adored. These are not, in the slightest, anything close to love. He adores everything about her, gladly worships at her feet when the scene calls for it, because, from the tips of her boot clad toes, to the top of that, admittedly excessively braided, hat, she is perfect. She has, after all, a rather remarkable eye for detail and insists upon only the best equipment to serve her purpose. Her riding crop, for instance, isn’t the sort of cheap thing that comes from a sex shop: it’s actually meant for horses. It stings of course but she doesn’t use it often, at least not to punish, and the slow trail of fabric covered shaft, over his skin, is always gloriously maddening.

He’d like to say that he’s had a great many revelations at her feet but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Mostly he has no thoughts at all while he kneels at her side. Occasionally, when she sits quietly, reading and enjoying her tea, she’ll ask him a question, something to do with his regular life and then smile, and stroke his hair soothingly, when he can’t for the life of him find an answer. Occasionally, he does answer and then she’ll frown, set her flight manuals aside, and turn her attention to him. The point of their sessions is for him to forget, after all. He isn’t meant to answer her questions, isn’t meant to recall anything other than that, for a set duration, he is her slave. And usually, unless it’s been a particularly troubling day, he forgets, easily. He forgets most things as he strips, so that by the time he kneels before her, by the time she fastens the collar around his neck, he is completely and utterly hers.

Mostly, she simply orders him about, in her beautifully smooth and husky voice. He performs domestic tasks like making her tea, setting the table for her meal or putting the dishes away. Of course, he’s had occasion to polish her tight, thigh-high, boots, while she wears them, to tighten the girdle she wears, or, on one memorable occasion, fetch her a new pair of stockings when she noticed a tear in the ones she was wearing. Sometimes, when she is feeling cruel, his task is to turn the pages for her, because she has chosen to withdraw her touch behind satin, elbow-length, gloves. She knows how much he craves her touch, knows that the gentle motions of her fingers against his scalp sooth him. If she wears gloves, he knows that he must work even harder to earn the smooth press of her skin against his, and he has yet to fail in that. He is precise in his tasks, perfectly obedient, and when, at last, she acknowledges this, he is often rewarded with her fingers in his hair, as she guides him to rest his cheek against her thigh.

Love, she tells him sometimes, is overrated, and she always looks a little sad when she says it. Then she tells him that sex is overrated too and laughs. If he could focus on anything other than the sound of her voice, he feels like he would argue, even though he’s made his own resolutions. But the thought never lingers. She always smiles fondly at him in those moments, never quite seeing him, her gaze turned inwards, lingering over something that only she can see. Sometimes, in sporadic flashes of consciousness, he wonders who it was that she must have loved and lost. And, very rarely, she’ll look at him so lovingly that he’s certain that he must, in some way, resemble the man she once loved. Someone who broke her heart, someone she can never have. Perhaps, then, he dares to wonder if he is, in some way, a replacement for somebody else. Of course he can’t be. He is too old, too broken, too tired of everything to be of any interest to her. She is young and beautiful and perfect. She could have any man she wanted: she couldn’t possibly want someone like him.

Afterwards, in the changing of the guard, when he is Douglas again, and no one’s slave, he still, sometimes, wonders. When Martin accepts the money gracefully, and, in that twilight between seeming and being, smiles her soft, sad, smile, as he leans over to kiss Douglas on the cheek before he departs. Then Douglas wonders again who that man must have been, to have wounded Martin so deeply. He’d ask, but it’s Martin who has heard out all Douglas’ resolutions, and thus wouldn’t think that Douglas had any interest in the subject. Love is overrated and Douglas has made a life-changing decision to never feel such weakness again. He can have what he needs, for a reasonable price, and that is all there is to it. He just needs a little peace and quiet, which is something that his beautiful mistress readily provides. She takes all thought and action out of his hands and lets him sink into restful silence. It’s none of his business why she does it. He gets what he wants, so does she, so there’s no reason for him to ponder it further. No reason at all, none whatsoever, to sometimes wish that he were capable of soothing all her sorrows away.

**Author's Note:**

> “It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  
> \- Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5


End file.
